"Heritage is a most compelling modern cause. In the last quarter century it has expanded from a small elite pastime to a major popular crusade - a crusade to save and celebrate anything and all that we inherit from the past. Everything - from Euro-Disney to the Holocaust Museum, from Balkan enmities to the Northern Irish troubles, from Elvis memorabilia to the Elgin marbles - bears the marks of the cult of heritage. Heritage attachments pervade politics and education and form (...) our views on such diverse realms as heredity, environment, racism, and tourism." "Enthralled by the past, we deploy it for present benefits of every kind. A goodly heritage persuades us we belong to a community of like-minded folk and act within a tradition sanctified by age-old experience. Heritage is all the more valued in a world where turbulent change and global fears make the present seem frightful and the future fearsome. Yet the very zeal with which heritage is pursued leads to countless abuses of the treasured past. Roots and relics become weapons to foment hatred of others, to warp historical truth, to deform our own legacy, to further some class or cause. Despite new recognition that the world's diverse legacies belong to and require the care of all mankind, heritage passions remain animated largely by self-regarding chauvinism." "In Possessed by the Past, David Lowenthal explains the rise of this new obsession with the past and shows its power for both good and evil. He probes the passions that generate a need to find or invent a prideful past - or to mourn a grievous one - and shows how they are similar the world over. He demonstrates why and how relics, ancestry, and memory today, more than ever, become a source of both pride and peril."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. (shrink)

Recalling that the Preamble of UNESCO's Constitution refers to “the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men”, rejects any “doctrine of the inequality of men and races”, stipulates “that the wide diffusion of culture, and the education of humanity for justice and liberty and peace are indispensable to the dignity of men and constitute a sacred duty which all the nations must fulfil in a spirit of mutual assistance and concern”, proclaims that “peace must be founded (...) upon the intellectual and moral solidarity of mankind”, and states that the Organization seeks to advance “through the educational and scientific and cultural relations of the peoples of the world, the objectives of international peace and of the common welfare of mankind for which the United Nations Organization was established and which its Charter proclaims”. (shrink)

"I am a Jew who was born and who grew up in a Catholic country; I never had a religious education; my Jewish identity is in large measure the result of persecution." This brief autobiographical statement is a key to understanding Carlo Ginzburg's interest in the topic of his latest book: distance. In nine linked essays, he addresses the question: "What is the exact distance that permits us to see things as they are?" To understand our world, suggests Ginzburg, it (...) is necessary to find a balance between being so close to the object that our vision is warped by familiarity or so far from it that the distance becomes distorting. Opening with a reflection on the sense of feeling astray, of familiarization and defamiliarization, the author goes on to consider the concepts of perspective, representation, imagery, and myth. Arising from the theme of proximity is the recurring issue of the opposition between Jews and Christians -- a topic Ginzburg explores with an impressive array of examples, from Latin translations of Greek and Hebrew scriptures to Pope John Paul II's recent apology to the Jews for antisemitism. Moving with equal acuity from Aristotle to Marcus Aurelius to Montaigne to Voltaire, touching on philosophy, history, philology, and ethics, and including examples from present-day popular culture, the book offers a new perspective on the universally relevant theme of distance. (shrink)